Dead Men Rush In
by GMsTales
Summary: Note: I'm currently GM-ing for a Dresden Files RPG group. The stories I'm posting here are based on our gaming sessions, and characters. Characters are original work, but most are not mine. The ones that aren't mine are used with the permission of their creators.


Dead Men Rush In:

Ed K. Danvers woke up both hearing and uttering a groan, which fact took him a few moments to realize.

It had taken a truly impressive amount of that cheap whisky to finally let him get asleep. The staff at that liquor board store hadn't wanted to be anywhere near him or his odour, and therefore weren't watching him closely enough to stop him from slipping a couple of 40-ounce bottles into the inside pockets of his filthy knee-length greatcoat. Adding that to the little mickey he had legitimately bought with the proceeds of his panhandling, and it was barely enough to get him through the night and most of the day. He was out like a light when the smartly dressed young man fell on the heap of soft garbage he was sleeping in, and jostling him from a deep sleep.

Groggy, Ed grabbed the dark-haired young man by his own light jacket and threw him off. The younger man rolled off and collapsed again in a heap, this time beside rather than on the no-longer sleeping transient. Once he landed the second time, four large men dressed in leather vests and well-worn jeans surrounded him and started landing kicks into his stomach, chest, and legs. A fifth man, this one with a shaved head tattooed with a death's head on the crown was holding a petite woman with a dusky complexion by her arms from behind facing the scene while she struggled to get between her boyfriend and his tormentors.

"Get a good look honey," the tattooed man rasped in her ear "When we finish with this hipster piece of shit we're gonna take you inside and show you what a real man can do. I'm first!" That last was less of a rasp and more of a giggle as he pressed against her from behind.

"Stan! Get off of him! Please!" She sobbed, not having the breath anymore to scream. "Someone please help us." But even though there were people rushing past outside the mouth of the alleyway no one stopped to help.

Ed raised himself up on one elbow to turn a baleful and bloodshot eye toward the beating. "Would you cut out the noise?" He croaked, "I'm sleeping here." None of the big men gave any sign that they heard him. "I said," he raised his voice, pausing for a fit of hacking coughs, "Cut it out with the fucking noise!"

That got their attention. The beating stopped and the four big men turned to face the reeking wreck of a man still wallowing in the trash. "Fuck off, trash bag!" A blond one shouted at him, first from the left. "Or we'll give you some of this when we're done!" And they turned around and got back to business. This gave Ed a moment to think about what exactly his reaction would be.

On the one hand, if he picked a fight like this he would almost definitely have to use his power, and _that_ meant the damned god would be able to find him again. He had moved inland away from the coast to maybe get some respite from the damned compulsions and waking hallucinations. Every day there was something else that _he_ wanted: A fisheries boat sabotaged, tanker fuel adulterated, strangely enough once even a library facade damaged. Every day the voice in his head was whispering; urging, ordering him to do things that he didn't want to do, if only because _he_ , Poseidon, wanted them done.

So Ed fled inland, hitchhiking when he could find someone willing to tolerate the rotten-fish reek that always surrounded him and stowing away in box trucks when he couldn't. And every day he got farther from the coast, the compulsions lessened in both their intensity and frequency. Sensing that his mind was becoming his own, Ed had breathed free air for the first time in thirty years. The sea god had no power here in Saskatoon Saskatchewan, literally as far from the sea as it was possible to get.

But his freedom would only last as long as he remained below notice. Ed knew from previous attempts to escape his divine master that if the god made the effort, he could possess him completely and _make_ him go back to the coast. The good news was that the sea god seemed to have forgotten about him among all of the other concerns he must have to deal with. That would only last so long as Ed stayed under the radar, however. If Ed were stupid enough to get into a situation where he needed to draw on Poseidon's power, that would be a nudge, a reminder to the sea god that his wayward servant was hiding out here in the prairie. And then his freedom would be at an end.

On the other hand, that young guy can't take too much more of this. And then the brunette…

"Shit. Shit shit shit damn crap. Shit!" And Ed launched himself at the blond man.

As leaps go, it wasn't much. Ed landed on the blond biker and dragged him down to the ground, pounding heavy punches into his face. Around the time the other three moved to pull him off, Ed landed a chopping right that crushed his target's nose and bounced the back of his head off of the asphalt. The blond's eyes went glassy as he slumped. But then the other three were on him. The first kick knocked him off of his victim without really hurting him; the force was taken up by the layers of ripe and tattered cloth. What it did do, though, was let him know that there was a _second_ leg coming in for a next kick. When that one came, Ed grabbed it and stood up taking it with him. The biker, this one with dark shoulder length hair that might as well have been styled with used oil, overbalanced and cracked his head on the road surface in the alley and stopped moving.

But that was where his luck ran out. The element of surprise was used up and there were still bikers left. Death's head let go of the girl and ran over to help his friends surround and pound the new target of their ire. The last thing Ed saw before losing consciousness was the young woman helping her boyfriend out of the alley and down the street. Then the blackness rolled in and brought with it blessed silence.

Sudden sunlight woke Ed as he was dragged out of a car trunk into afternoon glare. He was tied hand and foot and surrounded by twenty bikers wearing Hell's Angels patches on shoulders, chests, and backs. The tiny stones of a gravel pit dug into his jacket as he hit the ground.

"Wake up, fucko." said a man wearing fringed leathers. "You put Chuck and Jules in the hospital. You're gonna pay for that."

The man in fringed leathers bent down and clasped a heavy hook attached to a wire rope onto the rope attached to Ed's ankles. The other end of the wire rope was attached to the rear frame of a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

"Let's go for a ride."

Three kilometers down the highway, Ed was nearly delirious from pain. Getting dragged behind a motorcycle was definitely not fun, even with the 'gift' he got from the god Poseidon. That gift made him resistant to permanent damage, but didn't do anything at all about pain. His clothes were hanging off of him in bloody strips when the gang stopped and went back to check on him.

"Hey John! This asshole's barely road rashed!" Death's head called over to Fringed Leather, whose name apparently was John. "We gotta go another couple'a miles before he learns his lesson, man."

"Alright Brad. We'll go back to the quarry. Roll out!"

While they were turning around they stopped by the side of the road to let a car pass. It was an older model Lincoln town car, rust picking up in the wheel wells but otherwise in pretty good condition. When the car came alongside, Ed saw an attractive young woman with long dark hair and Japanese features in the driver's seat. She looked over at Ed and frowned.

'Just keep driving, lady' Ed thought to himself, willing the thought to her and trying to put the message into his gaze. 'I can take this. Just. Get. Out. Of. Here.' And then he met her eyes, and something weird happened.

The whole world compressed into a single point, and when it expanded again he was standing beside a rushing waterfall of bright golden flames. Fire fed a small river of the same living flame. The green vegetation at the edge of the pool was burned in a couple of places where the turbulence of the flames seemed to have lapped over the pool's edge sometime in the past. A small raised lip of smooth stones surrounded the basin at the foot of the...firefall? Ed got the sense that this place, with all of its flames and dangerous features, had a certain deadly beauty to it as well. He closed his eyes, relaxing in the warmth of the flames and letting it seep into him.

And then he was back in his abraded body, staring into the stunned eyes of a japanese girl. The girl pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car. If she was wearing any makeup, it was of high enough quality that he couldn't tell, not that Ed knew anything about makeup. Her face was set in a determined expression above the bright orange sundress she wore. She opened the back seat and reached in, drawing out a long branch and planting its end on the ground like a staff.

"Untie. That man." Her voice was soft, but combined with the light accent was a note of command that was unmistakable. This girl expected to be obeyed, and Ed believed that the danger that voice promised was real. Unfortunately, the bikers didn't.

"Look baby, you got one minute to get back in that car and fuck right off. One. Then we fuck you up." John didn't look impressed. He motioned and two of his people got off of their bikes and started walking toward her in what Ed certainly found a menacing way. The girl took all that in, and pointed her stick at one of the bikes, and it fucking exploded!

Pieces of what was once a motorcycle flew in all directions, hitting a bike here, a leg there, an arm over there. About half of the Angels went down with some kind of direct injury, and most of the others went down clutching their ears. Then the girl turned to John again and said to him:

"Untie that man now. Or I'll blow up all of your bikes and leave you all covered with burns." Her expression was still firm. John's face went white as the blood drained from his extremities to pool in his core. Faced with an existential terror, he had had enough.

"Let him go! We're out of here!" Brad rushed over to unhook the wire rope from Ed's feet, and cut his own fingers twice in his rush to slice off the binding ropes. Ed got to his feet and gave the biker a hard stare.

"You guys should get out of here. Now." And then his wounds healed themselves. It wasn't all at once, but it was definitely a visible process to anyone watching him. The bits of gravel that had embedded themselves in his skin and muscle forced their way out of him, and once the debris was out, the wounds themselves closed up leaving nothing but unblemished skin behind. The scent of salt water and rotting fish intensified and Ed's eyes glowed a colour somewhere between deep blue and bright green.

And, faced with these two monsters, they ran. All of them. Not in unison, but every single one of them turned tail and ran for the safety of the city, where strange monsters didn't exist, and life made sense. Once they were gone Ed turned to the girl and smiled. Then he fainted.

It was four days later when Ed found himself being led into an office by two members of the Saskatoon Police Service. He had woken up the day after his confrontation with the bikers in a dumpster behind the Boston Pizza restaurant on 8th street. He had been waiting for a message from Poseidon ever since. Around the third day he let out the breath he had been holding in. Maybe he didn't notice me, he thought. Maybe I'm far enough inland. And then the cops found him.

Two police members walked through the alley where he was trying to sleep that night, sweeping it like it was a drug den. "Hey Joey, how about this one? This has got to be the smell they talked about, right? Maybe this fucker's in behind the dumpster!"

"Calm down, Mike. This guy is supposed to be one of those weirdos. Remember what Tyveck said: Calm and reasonable. Don't spook this guy, and for God's sake don't threaten him."

"Yeah yeah. 'Keep an eye out, don't pick any fights'. I know. You know something Joey? You're a real pain in the ass sometimes. Why are you listening to Tyveck in the first place? He's not our boss."

"Are you kidding me? That guy is mixed up in weird stuff all the time. Besides, Bob says he knows things. I don't believe half of the stories about that guy, but that still leaves the other half, you know?"

When they got to the dumpster that, yes, Ed was curled up behind in a sort of nest made from cardboard boxes, they told him that they were sent to bring him to a meeting at the police station, and a job interview.

'Shit. Shit shit shit!' Ed thought, but he let them lead him to their car. True to their word he wasn't restrained in any way and they took him to an office, rather than an interrogation room. This left Ed nonplussed; an interrogation room he knew how to handle. Gods knew he'd been in enough of them over the years. But the office he was led into was full of new furniture: A glass-topped desk dominated the far end of the odd-shaped room with two of the three chairs occupied. The wall to his left was covered by a huge map of the city, and there were a number of pins in various colours embedded in it.

In one of the visitor chairs was an elderly Indian man, small-lensed glasses perched low on his nose, dressed in a conservative looking suit. His eyes ran up and down Ed's body when he entered the office, and the old man's expression was somewhere between fascination and kindness. Behind the desk was a much younger man, probably in his early to mid thirties. He was dressed in a baby blue button-down shirt and charcoal slacks, Ed saw when the man got up from behind the desk. But the man's eyes caught Ed's attention. Ed got the impression that this man didn't often miss much with eyes like that.

"Ah! Thank you gentlemen, this is exactly who I asked you to look for. You can leave, I'll be sure to call your sergeant if I need you guys again. Thank you." The man came forward and offered a hand to Ed. "My name is James Tyveck, and I would very much like for you to join a unit I'm putting together. But enough of that for now. Please, have a seat." This James fellow motioned toward the unoccupied visitor's seat, and Ed sat down.

"Hiya. Call me Ed. Danvers. Who's this guy?" Ed's voice was raspy at the best of times, a quality that got worse when he was under stress. And this week had Ed under a lot of stress. He was barely intelligible, but the man next to him seemed to understand.

"Hello. My name is Reyansh Singh. I am the head mortician at the Woodlawn funeral home." Reyansh reached out a hand to shake, and strangely didn't seem at all affected by Ed's distinctive odour.

"I understand you had a strange experience recently with a group of Hell's Angels, is that right?" James was seated behind his desk again and started the ball rolling. Ed shifted uncomfortably in his seat, acutely aware of those eyes across the desk. At the same time, he felt a familiar tickle at the back of his head. 'Shit.'

"I'm not gonna just answer a question like that, buddy. I don't want to end up in jail again," Ed replied, glancing to the side at Mr. Singh, who was looking very interested as well. The tickling continued, and even got a little more intense.

"Oh! Let me be clear, Ed. I'm not looking for an excuse to put you in jail. I'm tracking down a rumour of a man who turned a bunch of Hell's Angels bikers into a group of weeping and frightened children who are still bunkered down in their club house. I administer a small group of people with...special abilities to manage supernatural threats here in the city. I've been keeping an eye out for new members of my team and I think you'll make a good one."

"What about that girl? She did more to scare them than I did. She blew up a bike just by looking at it."

"I'm keeping an eye out for the girl. Did you happen to catch her name? That would make it a lot easier to find her." The damned tickle was getting so intense it was difficult to focus.

"Naw, I passed out before I could get it. But you know what I did get? A license plate number. Do you want that?" Ed reached out and wrote a short series of letters and numbers using paper and pen from the desk top. James' eyes went wide and he chuckled.

"Oh my, yes that would make my life easier. Does that mean that you're going to join us?" James reached into a lower drawer of the desk and pulled out a manila folder. He passed the folder across to Ed, who took it and spilled the contents out onto the desk.

"What's this?" There were several pages of dense print on the stack along with glossy colour photos of a furnished apartment.

"If you agree, this is an employment contract for Mr. Singh's funeral home to work as a mortician. The photos are your new apartment which I've taken the liberty of setting up for you. Mr. Singh has agreed to let you spend time working with me and my group, who you'll meet over the next couple of days. What do you say, Ed? Will you join us and help us protect this city and the people in it from monsters?" James was leaning forward over the desk toward him now, those damned eyes of his boring into him like he could _see_ the god's influence in Ed's head.

That fucking tickle was all Ed could think about for a full minute. The sea god was trying to force him to do something, but Ed couldn't figure out what the hell it was. Did the bastard want him to walk out of this meeting? Or did he want Ed to take the deal and put down roots here. 'Yeah right,' Ed thought to himself when he had managed to push the sensation back enough to think 'like he would want me to put down roots in the middle of the prairies. Fuck that guy.' And Ed opened his eyes, eyes he didn't remember closing. He reached across the desk and took James' right hand in his own.

"You've hired yourself a guy. Can't be too much worse than sleeping in dumpsters, anyway." The sensation of fingers scrabbling at the back of his head vanished completely. Ed was alone in his head again. He wondered if that was a good thing, or a very bad one.

"Wonderful!" James shook the hand heartily. "I'll leave you with Mr. Singh to get you started. Reyansh, can you take Ed to his place and call Franny about the wardrobe? She should be available this afternoon to come by and get his measurements." Mr. Singh nodded and got up from his seat at the desk.

"If you will come with me Mr. Danvers, We'll get something to eat and then get you acquainted with your new home."

James sat in silence for at least an hour after the two men left. He was pretty certain that his newest recruit was claimed by one of the gods of Europe's many pantheons, but which? Guessing from the tremendous stench of rotten fish and saltwater, it had to be one of the gods of the sea. Neptune? Opochtli? Repun Kamui? Poseidon? Only time would tell. And there was something beyond that. The man had something...some other, even greater aura of power that was somehow hidden from him. He could sense that it existed, but not what exactly it was. He hadn't dared turn his second sight on the man to solve the mystery; Looking too deeply has been known to drive men mad.

No, this was something to solve slowly, carefully. Brute force wouldn't be the right way to unravel this tangle. In the meantime, he had added another defender for the people of this city, an important one. Why this man, in this city, was important James didn't know, but he knew that he needed to keep recruiting. The girl, whoever she was, was another piece of the puzzle; James was sure of it.

At long last James stood from his desk and opened the window. He felt a profound need for fresh air.

That night Ed settled down into a soft bed for the first time in almost a year. Since most shelters wouldn't take him in anymore, they had trouble washing his odour out of the bedding afterwards, he had been 'sleeping rough' in dumpsters and garbage piles.

At any rate, this bed was soft and comfortable. He and Rayansh had stopped for takeout on the way to the apartment. Ed was well fed, warm, and comfortable in a place that was his. His. He had a job, two of them actually, and more importantly a purpose. Not to mention that he hadn't actually heard the voice at all, even after his 'gifts'. Maybe he was free at last?

'YOU HAVE DONE WELL, EDWARD.' The voice was in his head, he somehow knew that. Regardless, it was forceful enough that hearing it drove him off of the bed and to his knees. 'STAY THE COURSE. YOU WILL PLACE THIS CITY OF YOURS UNDER MY PROTECTION AND IN SO DOING YOU WILL CONSECRATE IT TO ME.' Ed blacked out for a moment. When he came back to himself he was laying on the floor with blood dripping from his ears.

He had never heard the voice speak so strongly before. Usually he was plagued with compulsions and drives to do specific actions, sometimes the voice would even whisper at the back of his awareness. Never had the voice made itself so forceful or direct. What the hell had he gotten into?

Ed eventually got back into the bed. It wasn't nearly so comfortable, despite being exactly the same.


End file.
